


Baby Bunny

by Not_You



Series: Animal Ears [3]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Animals, Alternate Universe - Kemonomimi, Autism Spectrum, Babies, Childbirth, F/F, Kemonomimi, M/M, Pets, except not really, government work, what will does at work all day
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-04 17:01:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12775473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not_You/pseuds/Not_You
Summary: Alana and Margot have their baby, and life goes on.





	1. Welcome Morgan

Will passes a very cozy winter, with Francis upstairs and Mischa sleeping by the fire on cold nights. On warmer ones, Hannibal does not hesitate to sexile them both to the barn. By day, everyone coddles Francis while he recovers from his various surgeries, and works with him on his vocal exercises when he's feeling better. Hannibal also takes him on a great many field trips, since Francis needs to get used to walking the streets as a free person. 

Francis also needs as much exercise as the next young, healthy dogman, so he also takes a lot of runs with the dogs, his ears and tail registering the same canine delight as theirs. Will often feels that blurring when he watches them, and while it's never comfortable, he's glad to be able to fully appreciate how glossy Francis's fur is now, and the subtle filling out from being properly fed, like so many other rescues Will has met. He's bulking up a bit, too, since one of his first purchases for himself was a weight set. He sometimes lifts with the smaller Baileys, who giggle and joyously shriek as he smoothly bench-presses them.

Will is starting to get used to being someone who has company. He doesn't protest as Hannibal buys him more dishware, and starts to keep tea in the house because Alana likes it better than coffee. There's also a caffeine-free herbal blend for Margot, and she has her own favored spot by the fire. Everyone here knows that she's as tough as nails, but she soaks up all of Alana's attentive fussing and every bit of Queen Mother's advice. Naturally, Queen Mother takes this poor orphan under her wing, and Will feels an inarticulate sense of relief at the sense that someone around here has done this kind of thing before.

Margot isn't actually due until March, but when Will picks up the phone in the middle of a Monday morning in February, it's Hannibal, letting him know that little Morgan Verger is on her way into the world. Apparently everything is going just fine, and there will be further bulletins as events warrant. Will accomplishes nothing for the rest of the day, and no one really begrudges him. He has heard again and again that the first one takes longer, but by early afternoon he has developed a definite twitch, and at three pm Crawford chases him out of his office, telling him to go wait some place where he won't make everyone else nervous, and to give Margot his and Bella's best wishes. 

Will mutters some vague assent, and another horrible wave of dread washes over him. They've been coming about every half-hour or so, and he takes a deep breath and reminds himself again just how small the odds are of such a healthy and well-attended pregnancy ending in sudden disaster. A treacherous voice in the back of his mind always wants to talk about the myriad health risks of back-alley egg-splicing, but he ignores it. Crawford politely waits for him to get a grip on himself, and then steers him to the elevator.

It may be better for office productivity to have Will out of the building, but he has nowhere useful to go. He stops by his house to look in on the dogs, Francis, and Mischa, and just when his skin feels like it's about to crawl off of his body with nerves, Hannibal calls him again.

"Do events warrant a bulletin?"

"No," Hannibal says, "but I would appreciate your presence. And real food, the closest restaurant is a McDonald's."

Will chuckles, his tense shoulders relaxing a little. "You poor thing. Do you have something prepared, or am I making a sandwich out of real ingredients?"

There is a casserole, apparently, but that's for Francis and Mischa to heat up later. Will makes two enormous sandwiches, making sure to use the artisan rosemary bread Hannibal likes so much, and sticks them into his smallest cooler along with some San Pelligrino, because he is living with the kemonomimi equivalent of the cat in a Fancy Feast commercial. 

A kemonomimi birthing center is not a place where Will generally has any business, and he steps into the lobby cautiously. The receptionist twitches his long rabbit ears and Hannibal stands up from one of the long couches. He looks tired and about equally grateful to see Will and food. There are a few private rooms for family and friends to wait between bouts of moral support, and Hannibal leads Will to the one that he has claimed. Once the door is closed, he neatly unwraps his sandwich on the table and then devours it in between giving Will a more comprehensive report.

"Progress is slow," he says, "but we've been monitoring Morgan. Margot is psychologically prepared for a caesarian section, but doesn't need one yet."

"As long as the kid has enough oxygen," Will says, shrugging. He only knows anything about birth from helping a real dog have her puppies, but he grasps the basics. He pauses. "Uh... how's Alana holding up?"

"Almost too well," Hannibal says, grinning. "Rabbits tend to either get faint around the smells and flee, or become determined to guard themselves or their loved one from predators."

"If you go back in, remind her from me not to bite the nurses, they don't cotton to it."

Hannibal chuckles. "I will," he says, and inhales the rest of his sandwich.

Once Hannibal is back in the birthing room for more moral support, Will stretches out on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. The dogs have company, and Will knows that he won't be able to turn his hand to anything useful. So he just lies here, so keyed up but dozing off anyway from a combination of boredom and being exhausted from tension. He has terrible, anxious dreams, but none are enough to wake him up. That doesn't happen until Hannibal comes out to collect his sweaty monkeything, gently teasing him as he helps him up and lets him know that just before surgery Morgan came out like a stubborn cork finally giving way.

"A nice, fat, healthy rabbit kit. Right now they're running some tests and she's almost certainly going to need laryngeal surgery, but sucking and swallowing is going just fine."

Will feels a wide, silly smile spreading over his face, and doesn't fight it. All three of the girls are tired, but Margot imperiously calls him into her room, where she'll be staying for a couple of days with Morgan. Alana looks utterly fried, but also pleased to see Will, and he stays quiet and makes no sudden movements, tiptoeing over to investigate the sleeping baby. She has black lop ears like Alana, nestled in the same kind of blonde fuzz that Margot was born with. He smiles down at both of them, and Margot smiles back.


	2. Home Visits And Other Consolations

Babies seem to be a bit of running theme in Will's life right now. There's Morgan, of course, but at work Rachelle is getting closer and closer to her own due date, Spot and her twins will need to pass through his office again after another well-baby check, and first thing today he has to look in on Marta, his latest pet placement. Really, it's a mix of being a pet and being a service kemonomimi, but in this case the line is blurred almost out of existence.

The Ackerman-Moores are an odd couple, but they can't really help it. They basically have a doctor's note to be odd, being well along the autism spectrum, and to a man who spent most of elementary school bouncing in and out of Special Ed classes, there's something sort of homey about it. Will has never been huge on eye contact with strangers anyway, so it's nothing to him if Janet Ackerman-Moore is staring at the floor when she lets him into the house. She's wearing a work shirt and jeans that probably belong to her husband. They're about the same size and frequently share clothes.

"Everyone is in the den," Janet says, her voice flat and nearly robotic the way it always is. It can be very hard to read her emotions or her husband's, but Will always has the feeling that she's afraid that she's in trouble for something.

Will slips out of his shoes because his hostess has Views on that subject, and pads after her to the back room. The house is a split-level, so it's two steps down to the door, which opens into a large room with a deep red-orange carpet, a matching couch and chairs, and a little white noise machine in each corner, filling the room with their soothing hiss.

Victor Ackerman-Moore is deeply involved in something on his laptop, and Marta is sprawled his feet, looking sleek and plump and happy, the laughing baby crawling all over her. Victor looks up from his work when Will comes in and beams at him. "Hello! Marta is doing a good job."

"Marta good,' Marta adds, and gently disengages one chubby little hand from her floppy black ear, her gleaming tail wagging.

Will chuckles. "Looks like it," he says. Little Grace certainly looks better, fat and happy and making little crowing noises as she stands up shakily. She has to sit right down again, still not ready for that huge first step, but she's nowhere near delayed yet. Her pediatrician will know more about her developmental targets, but Will keeps a basic knowledge of the usual stages in his head.

"We're trying to learn to touch her more," Victor says, "but it's hard." Where Janet is under-expressive, Victor is almost comically over-expressive, and not for the first time, Will wonders how they manage to get on so well.

"Too much," Janet mutters, and Will nods.

"I know you're working on it," he says, because they really are. 

They know everything about Grace, are obsessive about her physical safety, and carefully make their own baby food, steaming and pureeing the best ingredients they can find. They don't hesitate to change a diaper or bandage a scrape, but the hugs and the kisses and the cooing and counting of toes and all the sheer physical adoration that an infant needs to grow properly goes against the grain. It's hard work to learn something like that so late in life. Will sincerely hopes that no one has taken their difficulty with touch as a sign that they don't care. The thought is so infuriating that he has to force his mind onto another track as fast as possible. No good being anything but calm.

His real job here is to talk to Marta, and it's about time for Grace to eat again, anyway. Janet picks her up, and Will is pleased to note that her hold is a little less stiff than it was the last time he saw it. With Grace in the kitchen, Marta can concentrate. She curls up on one end of the couch and Will sits on the other, asking her gently about what she does every day and what she eats and how she feels. 

Dogs will almost always lie to cover up neglect and abuse because they're too loyal for their own good, but they're also awful liars. Marta's eyes gleam with sincerity, and her ears are relaxed and her tail wags as she tells him about her lovely meals and the park up the street and getting to sleep by Grace's crib every night. She looks much happier than she did in her supported residence, and Will breathes the internal sigh of relief that he always does when he starts to believe that a pet placement really is working. He feels so weird about them in general, but this family and Marta need each other.

Any time a home visit shows Will a happy, healthy, and beloved kemonomimi, he feels like life has a point. He leaves in a good mood, and it's only bolstered by his next appointment, another family meeting with Rachelle. These days that means enough people are present that they use a conference room instead of Will's office. Rachelle is here, of course, as well as her parents, Treesong and Treesong's parents, a Feral Nation liaison, and a social worker who specializes in 'at-risk kemonomimi youth.'

Rachelle is enormous these days, but very sleek. Treesong sits beside her, holding her hand and looking very alert. Rachelle's mother is much better disposed toward him these days, because she has had all winter to realize that he really is responsible and devoted. Ferals tend to be more mature than city-born kemonomimi at the same age, and Treesong's whole family have that unmistakeable look of inhuman but keen intelligence.


	3. Back To Work

The plan so far is for Rachelle's parents to help her raise the baby, and for Treesong to get his blue card, the proper ID for ferals who have cause to stay in civilization for at least the next year. They're easy to renew, so whenever he gets too homesick he can just go back to the Nation for a bit and then come back and renew. His parents will fill out the advance expedition forms to make their future visits to the kids easier, which for illiterate ferals means putting an X where indicated after someone carefully reads everything aloud. They have also promised to send food for Treesong and everyone else. There's a lot of game in the Nation, and vast, semi-cultivated berry patches.

"I keep saying they don't have to," Rachelle's mother says, "but they insist."

Treesong's mother nods, purring. Her son takes after her, with a delicate, bony face, huge blue eyes, and cat parts blotched grey and white. His father is enormous and square, with orange tabby fur and brown skin, which is his only clear contribution to his son's looks, making Treesong a rich, smooth gold color while his mother is so pale that sun exposure has only given her thick swaths of freckles. He's probably the calmest person in the room, with the lazy majesty of a lion at rest. Now he grins, showing sharp teeth, and signs that they must insist, that if their son is going to be a fool and breed too early, they must take up some part of the extra effort required. He pauses, and then adds that the game and berries are good for Rachelle and the baby, which is of course even more important.

"I think you're stuck with their graciousness, Rhoda," he says to Rachelle's mother, and she laughs.

"I guess so. Thank you both so much," she adds, to them, and they just purr and blink slowly.

Treesong has learned a lot about Symbols, Signifiers, and Literacy already, and he purrs proudly when Will says so. "I've been looking over your work," he says, "and you're doing remarkably well." Treesong hopes to get some kind of paying work to help his in-laws, and Rachelle is determined to get him into an art class or two, because he appreciates beautiful things so much. At the rate he's going, that should be no trouble, and Rachelle beams when Will says so.

By the time the meeting is over, Will can justify taking his lunch break, and that gives him time to catch up on all the texts and photos from Hannibal, who is spending Morgan's first night and day home helping her mothers. Changing tiny diapers, stocking the fridge and freezer with nutritious food, and gathering all kinds of evidence that Morgan is the most adorable baby bunny in the history of the world. Will chuckles, making his way through them, and when Peter comes wandering in, shows him several of the best. Peter sighs and coos over what a precious baby Morgan is, and the light in his eyes makes Will think for the thousandth time that Peter would be an involved and doting father.

"She's going to need work on her voice box," Will says, "but there's time for that later. This little, as long as she can eat, we're fine."

"Y-yeah," Peter says. "M-my, my cousin n-needed, needed some. W-wonderful pediatric p-p-practitioner, let me kn-know when they're looking."

"I will," Will says, "thanks."

Now that he's actually calm enough to get anything done, he spends his afternoon catching up on the paperwork, and sending texts to Hannibal that he hopes don't sound too needy. He is going to miss him tonight, and feels ridiculous for it. At least he has Francis and Mischa at home, to say nothing of his dogs, always overjoyed to see him. The dogs come swarming out, and when Mischa comes strolling after them, she sees something in Will's face that makes her lean in and rub her cheek along his shoulder.

"It'ssss ooaaanllee oone nnnightk," she says, and he chuckles.

"Yeah, I know, it's pathetic. Where's Francis?"

"Lllifting," she says, rolling her eyes.

"Dogs like exercise, he's got to do something," Will says, and leads the way into the house. Hannibal has of course left a prepared dinner for them, like a fretful housewife, and Will puts it into the oven to heat up.

The three of them pass a pleasant evening, and Will even manages to get to sleep without Hannibal's purring, somehow. Still, he is profoundly grateful when he wakes up to the familiar sensation of a silent and enormous catman sliding into bed with him. Usually Hannibal smells like wet grass, the forest, and optional blood when he makes these quiet returns, but this time he smells like a nursery, so incredibly domestic that Will chuckles, mostly muffled in the pillow as Hannibal wraps around him from behind.

"Glad to have you back, grimalkin," he says softly, and Hannibal purrs.

"You're expected to come and pay tribute to her royal highness within the next two weeks or so," he murmurs, "but I think you knew that."

"Maybe. It's always a little bit hard to believe it when people want me around."

"Silly monkey," Hannibal croons, and kisses his cheek.

"Mm. Maybe so," he says, and then catches another hour and a half before he has to get up for work.

Francis is coming in with him today, and as they walk out to the car Will looks over at him, having one of those time-lapse moments when how much a person has changed is suddenly visible. Francis has filled out so much from the underfed creature Will took in, and his clothes actually fit him and he holds his tail like he has a right to exist. It's almost enough to bring a tear to his eye, and Francis cocks his head.

"All right?" he asks. His accent is almost gone these days, but he can't shake a certain amount of self-consciousness about speaking.

"Yeah," Will says, and takes Francis's hand. "Come on," he says, and Francis does, his tail gently wagging.


End file.
